Oral Health Assessment of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Literature Review

Abstract

Autistic children have dental health problems that are often encountered, namely dental caries, periodontal disease, environmental damage to the oral cavity, tooth eruption disorders, and trauma. Coordination of irregular tongue movements causes eating to be often held in the mouth and not directly swallowed, aggravated by the habit of consuming caryogenic foods so that the risk of dental caries is higher in autistic children. Objective: Explain the maintenance of oral health in view of oral hygiene in autistic children. Method: using Systematic Literature Review obtained from 4 databases namely Google Schoolar, Pubmed, Wiley and Science Direct. Results: Maintaining good oral hygiene in autistic children is difficult due to insufficient interest, hypersensitivity to various stimuli and the necessary manual dexterity. Many autistic children experience caries and periodontal disease, this fact strongly shows the great difficulty experienced by autistic children and parents in implementing oral hygiene care, influencing factors due to impaired concentration and interaction in autistic children and a lack of parental of understanding of oral health maintenance . Proper maintenance by maintaining the cleanliness of mouth and improving skills in brushing teeth in autistic children.